Awards & Scholarships

Eugene Pretorius completed his undergraduate studies in South Africa, then graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a master’s degree in geochemistry and mineralogy and a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering. Following his graduate studies, he returned to South Africa, where he started his career at Mintek (Council for Mineral Technology). There he conducted pilot-scale research on pyrometallurgical systems involving, gold, platinum group metals, nickel, chrome, manganese, and titanium. After almost four years at Mintek, Pretorius joined ISCOR as a technical advisor in their R&D department, supporting their iron and steelmaking divisions. He also served as associate professor in the Material Science and Metallurgical Engineering department at the University of Pretoria. In 1994, Pretorius accepted a position with LWB Refractories. Here he developed and managed the Steelmaking Technology Group. Pretorius Eugene has written many papers on slag and steelmaking fundamentals and optimization and presented numerous short-courses on these topics. He has received multiple awards, including the Gibbs Award for best paper from the Iron & Steel Society. In 2003, Pretorius joined Nucor as manager of steelmaking technology.